Migrate a Windows light forwarder

If you want to replace an existing light forwarder with a universal forwarder, you need to first migrate its checkpoint data to the new forwarder. Checkpoint data is internal data that the forwarder compiles to keep track of what data it has already forwarded to an indexer. By migrating the checkpoint data, you prevent the new universal forwarder from forwarding any data already sent by the old light forwarder. This ensures that the same data does not get indexed twice.

You can migrate checkpoint data from an existing Windows light forwarder (version 4.0 or later) to the universal forwarder. For an overview of migration, see "Migrate from a light forwarder" in this manual.

If you want to migrate, you must do so during the installation process. You cannot migrate post-installation.

You perform a Windows installation with either the installer GUI or the command line:

Important: You must install the universal forwarder in a different directory from the existing light forwarder. Since the default install directory for the universal forwarder is C:\Program Files\SplunkUniversalForwarder and the default install directory for full Splunk Enterprise (including the light forwarder) is C:\Program Files\Splunk, you'll be safe if you just stick with the defaults.

What the installer does

Whichever installation method you use, the Windows installer performs the following actions:

1. Searches for an existing heavy or light forwarder on the machine.

2. Determines whether the forwarder is eligible for migration (must be at version 4.0 or above).

3. If it finds an eligible forwarder, the GUI offers the user the option of migrating. (The command line installer looks to see whether the MIGRATESPLUNK=1 flag exists.)

4. If user specifies migration (or the MIGRATESPLUNK=1 flag exists), the installer shuts down any running services (splunkd and, if running, splunkweb) for the existing forwarder. It also sets the startup type of the services to manual, so that they don't start up again upon reboot.

5. Migrates the checkpoint files to the universal forwarder.

6. Completes installation and configuration of the universal forwarder.

What you need to do

At the end of this process, you might want to perform additional configuration on the universal forwarder. Since the migration process only copies checkpoint files, you will probably want to manually copy over the old forwarder's inputs.conf configuration file (or at least examine it, to determine what data inputs it was monitoring).

Once the universal forwarder is up and running (and after you've tested to ensure migration worked correctly), you can uninstall the old forwarder.

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